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Also a big the Audible fan, and Podcast Ain't Played Nobody from SB Nation is my other favorite national college football podcast. Godfrey and Bill Connelly are a great, as they say, college football marriage of numbers and words. It's honestly one of the closest things to MGoBlog content I've found on the national level.

Hope you like mid-majors is all, but they do cover the Power 5 quite a bit as well, albeit sometimes begrudgingly.

The "Quan" is a dance move that's kind of hard to explain - a sort of slow walk with swinging arms and loads of swagger. The move is based on the dancing of the rapper Rich Homie Quan (hence "Quan") in the music video of his song Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh). But it became popular because of a group called @IHeartMemphis making a song called Hit the Quan which led to the dance becoming wildy popular.

This has also led to lots of Vines of people doing the dance/hitting the Quan - see some here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu6lCRtHDc8.

How does the quality and/or bad losses of our basketball team impact WD's or anyone else's ability to note that Minnesota is playing poorly tonight? Seems like their being down 23 at half to SDSU (who at least hasn't beaten them multiple times in football like NDSU) and WD noting it has nothing to do with how Michigan played tonight or any other time...

But more importantly crowd-sourcing the naming of positions like head coach is a brilliant idea. Who wouldn't donate to make the Zack Novak Assistant Basketball Coach happen? The Dennis Norfleet Slot WR/Running Back/Returner/Slash Coach?

Straight performance based like that? The number would have to be much more than 25K, but there's something to be said for rewarding performance only. Of course it couldn't work because of injuries and managers taking pitchers out, but it's an intriguing thought..

Because they're close Hoke can't fire him? He's too sentimental to fire his good friend? That's not the Brady Hoke I think I know or the one Dave Brandon knows, either. Yes he likes to be nice but he knows his ultimate job is to win football games. Hoke wouldn't fire Borges because they're too close, even with his own job potentially at stake? He would give up being the head football coach at Michigan, his stated dream, to save one fellow coach, until he was forced by the AD to fire him? I call BS

Even with the new system, student-athletes in the championship game will miss less class than those in FCS and lower levels, and those who play almost any other sport - basketball being the most notable example. I honestly don't think that missing another day or two was or should be a consideration in formatting the Playoff.

The Spartans' 24-20 victory over Stanford in the Rose Bowl Game presented by VIZIO might propel them to even bigger things in 2014. MSU also upset then-No. 2 Ohio State to win its first outright Big Ten championship since 1987, and it figures to battle the Buckeyes again for supremacy in the conference this coming season. Michigan State loses three starters on the offensive line and six more on defense, including star linebackers Max Bullough and Denicos Allen and All-American cornerback Darqueze Dennard. MSU coach Mark Dantonio might have to ask a little more from his offense, which improved as first-year quarterback Connor Cook and tailback Jeremy Langford became more comfortable. Keeping defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi, who turned down Connecticut's head-coaching job, was a major coup. MSU plays a nonconference game at Oregon on Sept. 13 and will play the majority of its difficult Big Ten games at home. The Spartans host Nebraska, Michigan and Ohio State and won't play Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota or Northwestern in the league's new scheduling format.

The Buckeyes fell just short of going undefeated in two consecutive regular seasons under Urban Meyer, but then finished the season with consecutive losses against Michigan State and Clemson in the Discover Orange Bowl. Now Meyer will have to rebuild much of his offense, even with quarterback Braxton Miller returning for his senior season. OSU will have to replace four starting offensive linemen, tailback Carlos Hyde and H-back Philly Brown. The Buckeyes might bring back seven starters on defense; safeties Corey Brown and C.J. Barnett, junior cornerback Bradley Roby and junior linebacker Ryan Shazier are the only starters leaving. OSU opens the season against Navy in Baltimore and plays Virginia Tech and Cincinnati at home in nonconference games. The Buckeyes won't play Iowa, Nebraska, Northwestern or Wisconsin during Big Ten play, and their most difficult league road games seem to be at Penn State and Michigan State.

is that it would hurt them both short term but the NFL is both more able (as a more profitable enterprise) and more willing (as a profit-focused enterprise) to withstand the short-term losses, and college football would have to give up the time slot and go back to Monday or whenever.

The reason the Prem is so pushed by ESPN, and followed much more closely by many here, is that the level of play is incredibly higher, to t the point tha tyou can't even compare the two. You can't expect serious soccer fans to care about, or ESPN to promote, a league that would be maybe the third or fourth level of the English pyramid, a league whose All-Star team struggles against the reserves of any top BPL team.

You can argue that ESPN (and/or NBC) overpromotes the Prem in relation to other high-quality leagues in countries that don't speak English (La Liga, the Bundesliga), but using the MLS as your example is just silly.

2008 Northwestern, bitter cold and rain to watch a RichRod team (NO POLITICS) lose 21-14 in a game that I remember thinking wasn't as close as the scoreline. Being in the Big House was the only redeeming feature.

First of all, GREAT win, and it was GREAT to be there. Love to see the fight, and players stepping it up big when needed, especially Horford and Irvin. What excites me the most about this team is that while there's no go-to scorer necessarily, there are at least five or six guys who are both willing and able to score on any given posession that they're out there - Stauskas, Walton, Irvin, Caris, GRIII and now apparently Horford, at least.

That said, a few areas of concern/potential improvement that I think are why the game was so close for so long. This is ignoring the issues late.

1. Switching on defense: Most of Minnesota's points seemed to come after two or three picks, when we were switching between their players and would rotate over to the last man just a beat late, giving them an open shot. Not sure how this can be improved, and it's obviously what many teams try to do, but it just seemed worse tonight.

2. Transition defense: This was a real study in contrasts. While whenever we got out in transition our opportunities were shut down by all five of Minnesota's guys getting back, Minnesota had plenty of chances as we struggled to get back.

3. Turnonvers: I knew we caused more, but ours seemed more crucial and more of the preventable, just throwing the ball away type. Hopefully this will improve with time and with not facing a press defense like Minnesota.

So glad we pulled it out, great momentum boost for the start of Big Ten play! Go Blue!

Since we are the "State of Hockey". It is nice to have two of the key players be from the Wild, though, after years of Wild players playing much more important roles for Sweden and Slovakia than for the US

With Lovie now off the table, many of the other candidates who might qualify (Sumlin, Shaw, Franklin) are for the most part college coaches who don't want to leave. I suspect that Todd Bowles of Arizona (who I like a lot, maybe for my Vikings) might get quite a few interviews.

There are some things that can be done in year one of a two-year reclamation project to make Borges / Funk more likely to keep their jobs, you'd think. The biggest one for me would be not having those three clunkers a year. That combined with defining a base running play and getting good at it should allow us to move up to (dare I say it?) maybe 100th in tackles for loss, at least, even if the offensive line is still a year away.

was that, once again, once the pre-scripted 10 to 15 plays ran out (after the first two drives), the offense was out of effectiveness and creativity once again. Some of this is KSU figuring out Shane, but I think there's a deeper problem. The drive chart someone put somewhere shows this really nicely. While I'm not necessarily calling for Borges's head, I think this is a big flaw that we've seen happen multiple times and definitely needs correcting.

My hypothesis is that for a successful up-and-comer at, say, Colorado, the order may well be Patriots > Texas > Jaguars. There's no way to know of course, but even someone who's going to move might prefer the college job. This is why having a database, or at least one coach's true opinion, would be cool - in order to know definitively.

Wouldn't the resources / prestige / money / influence of the Longhorn job top that of, say, the Jaguars? Or the Bills? I'd argue probably yes, but again it would most likely depend on case-by-case if it's a "college" coach or an "NFL" one.

To get an authoritative view of where they all stood. Texas would be above some NFL jobs, presumably, but which ones? Have they fallen off significantly in the past few years? Would be informative (if perhaps a little depressing) to see where Michigan falls.

I suppose it depends on the coach being hired as well, Brady would have walked to Michigan (God bless him) when others wouldn't have.

My bad on the sarcasm. Oregon's also a good example of establishing one base play and running it well throughout the game, instead of having three to vary wildly between from series to series and week to week.

There are only 32 NFL teams, and even the most mediocre are still huge operations with more money and more prevalence in society than college - the NFL is the most popular sports organization in the country. Only a few colleges can hope to compete, and even those that can still aren't "top dog", so to speak, in the football world or the sports world.

I'm really torn on this one - on the one hand they had a lot of close games and were very close to being a lot better (even in the playoffs), but on the other hand losing all of those games late probably says something about the coaches. He had to deal with Ponder, Cassel and Freeman at quarterback, but he got to have Adrian Peterson (who, by the way, spoke many times about how he wanted Frazier back). Probably a good call to fire him, depending on who they get.

Running game and O-line that look more functional than they did at many points this year, defense that holds up better and doesn't give up big plays. Progress between the regular season and the bowl would help me believe that the team can get better between now and next season.

And a testament to the unique civility of the MGoBoard that even though this post is from one of the more, uh, controversial posters, we can all ignore the itch to downvote and bond together in honoring a great Michigan man like Frank Beckmann.

The one thing I would question is how much our ability to avoid foul trouble is related to the B1G refs. It's conceivable that some of the reason why we pick up so few fouls has to do with the refereeing. I don't think this will be too much of an issue because 1. Our generally less physical style of play means we'll have less of a dropoff than other Big Ten teams and 2. Going down a bit from having the 4th fewest (or whatever the rank is) fouls won't hurt us that much.

So I would agree that the switch will benefit us but, beyond opening up the offense, it might force us into some tactical changes on the defensive end.